66 posts categorized "Humor"

June 27, 2011

(EXPLAINER: If you don't catch the refernce, "bleepin' golden" is the linguistically cleaned-up way that US Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald quoted Blago's FBI-taped description of the opportunities that President Obama's old Senate seat offered an enterprising governor to, as Blago later described provide more benefits to serve the people of Illinois. Questions that Fitz raised about the nature of what benefits to WHICH people marked the path to Blago's indictment and eventual conviction.

(And if you don't follow the news closely enough to have known that without my telling you, you're qualified to have been a Blago juror. That's the irony of our legal system. Lawyers for both sides traditionally seek jurors who are registered to vote but don't follow the news. Sounds like a contradiction of sound democratic principles to me, but I'm just a journalist.)

May 29, 2011

Our encouraging thought for the day goes out to this season’s graduating classes: Cheer up. Those same qualities that brought scorn, shunning and outcast status in high school often bring the most success in adult life.So says author Alexandra Robbins, writing in our sister newspaper the Los Angeles Times. As examples who were shunned by the Cool Table in the school cafeteria, she offers country star Taylor Swift, fashion icon Tim Gunn and Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling. Take that, snobs."The most heartbreaking consequence of this treatment is that tens of thousands of students—imaginative, interesting, impressionable people—think that they have done or felt something wrong," writes Robbins, yet “being different is not a problem but a strength."

May 11, 2011

I was sorry to hear that “Chicago Code” is about to be axed, as Luis Arroyave reports. It’s not because the show offered such a true-to-life depiction of Chicago police and politics (It didn’t). I enjoyed the program mainly because I am a fan of Jennifer Beals. I've been rooting for her ever since she was one of the students I met at a Goodman Theater high school workshop to which I lectured many moons ago. Even then she was a standout talent.She’s had a great career from “Flashdance” to “The L Word.” But in my view, she deserves better scripts than “Chicago Code” provides. Compared to the real cops and pols I’ve covered for a few decades, the dialogue and situations sound like they were dreamed up by a Los Angelean. Fuh-gedda-bow-dit.

March 26, 2011

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich once again shows himself to be the gift that keeps on giving for journalists on slow news days.On Saturday he acknowledged shifting his position on the U.S. military intervention in Libya, then quickly tried to justify it. He said he was only responding to President Obama’s changing views.“The fact is that on each day I was on television I was responding to where the president was that day,” the Republican former House Speaker Gingrich told a gathering of conservative Iowans, according to ABC News. “And so obviously there were contradictions.”“It’s true,” he added, “I was trying to follow Obama.”Say what? Does Gingrich actually pay attention to what he says before he denies saying it?

March 08, 2011

When I heard that CBS finally fired Charlie Sheen, I reacted in the way Dorothy Parker responded to news that a mediocre president had died: "How can you tell?"

After parading his narcissism from one TV show to another for a week of escalating insults against his employers --and rambling babble about “winning” and drinking “Tiger blood” Sheen seemed to be all but begging to be canned.

Or perhaps caned, perhaps by the president his father played on West Wing. I would have bought a ticket to see that.

Mubarak's transferring power to his veep, but staying president--whatever that all means. He also took a verbal swipe at people from outside Egypt who want him to leave. Gee, I wonder who he could possibly be talking about!

January 29, 2011

You read it here first, folks. Remember my suggestionthat Hawaii raise revenue by selling tickets to see President Barack Obama's original birth certificate? Might as well earn a little revenue, I reasoned, instead of going in debt answering birthers' endlessly badgering questions.

Truth be told, I was writing with tongue halfway-in-cheek. But Obama supporters in Hawaii's legislator have introduced legislation that goes halfway toward my idea. Unfortunately, I predict, that half-stepping may be its undoing.

December 28, 2010

Just when the goofy and, I suspect, xenophobic birther movement appeared to be fading into the margins of rational society, Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii gives it some new juice.

Abercrombie, a Democrat who knew Obama's parents as classmates at the University of Hawaii and says he personally saw the younger Barack Obama as a baby, is fed up with the movement that's been trying to assert Obama was born someplace else, the New York TImes reports.

Although Obama has more important things to care about, Abercrombie quite properly views the contrived controversy as an insult to the president's parents. To put the issue to rest, the governor announced he is taking steps to release additional evidence that baby Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961, as the copy that has long been released to the public says.

About this blog

I’m an op-ed columnist who has too much to say about too much stuff to contain in my two columns-a-week. My views? I’m a proud factory-town liberal who nevertheless will surprise you from time to time – because liberals just l-o-o-o-v-e to criticize other liberals. Join the chat. I can’t tell you what to think, but I’ll offer you things to think about. About Clarence Page